


Believe Me When I Say

by ChibiSquirt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Pirates of the Caribbean Fusion, BAMF Tony Stark, Bucky as Davy Jones, Consentacles, M/M, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-17 03:16:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: When Tony gets mortally injured in a sea battle, Bucky trades his freedom to Davy Jones in order to save his life.A Pirates of the Caribbean-themed WinterIron AU.





	Believe Me When I Say

**Author's Note:**

  * For [adarksweetness (chayaasi)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chayaasi/gifts).



> Many thanks to Manibear for a) the prompt, b) her patience, and c) the ideas to get me started! This was a blast to write, if someone difficult. Hopefully you love it! 
> 
> Also thanks to Valmasy and Buhfly for the beta work. Did you all know that pirates actually had same-sex marriage? I was so delighted by that knowledge that I told the reader about fifteen times in the first five paragraphs that Tony and Bucky were married. Jo is the angel who brought me back down to two. 
> 
> Anything in here which would have been tech in the modern setting is spackled with magic--so Tony is an enchanter, as much as an inventor. I also couldn't resist giving Davy Jones!Bucky a tentacle arm. The tentacle isn't central to the plot, though, and the sex there is not explicit, in case you were worried about that particular tag. 
> 
> Enjoy!

**BUCKY**

 

“What else was I supposed to do?” Bucky asks in a tired whisper.  

He’s speaking in a whisper because he and Steve are both in the captain’s cabin of the  _ Vengeance _ .  Steve is there because his ship, the  _ Soldier’s Howl,  _ has just gone under the waves for good; Bucky is there because his husband is there.

Not long ago, his husband was  _ dying  _ there.  Bucky has at least fixed that problem.

He just had to trade his freedom and possibly his soul to do it.

“I’m gonna go with  _ anything else but that,  _ Buck!”  Steve’s whisper is less quiet than Bucky’s is—probably because Steve is way more inclined towards shouting right now.

“If you wake him up,” Bucky hisses, “I’m gonna choke you until  _ you  _ pass out, instead.”

Steve casts a guilty glance at Tony’s unconscious form and lowers his volume, but not his intensity.  He also goes straight for the jugular.  “You think he would want you to make this sacrifice, Buck?  You think this is his idea of a good deal?” 

Bucky knows it’s not.  He also knows, though, that he would have moved Heaven and Earth to keep Tony safe.  

So he did.

 

* * *

 

_ (two hours earlier) _

 

Tony is lying in their bed dying, and it’s one of the worst moments of Bucky’s life.  

Bad enough what the man does with his life; bad enough their cause has all of them hunting slavers, the worst of the worst, even as it puts them on the shady side of the crown’s justice.  Bucky can’t say anything about that; he’s right there beside Tony, after all, and it’s work that needs doing, work that makes the world a better place.  He and Steve are in this up their necks, too, and there are more folks they want to get out, more people they could save... 

...but it doesn’t make it any easier to see the love of his life lying there, barely hanging on to his mortal fuckin’ coil!  

Tony was Captain of the  _ Vengeance _ and a brilliant enchanter, before.  Now, he might still be Captain, but not for long; he’s pale and weak, gasping for breath on every inhale.  His chest looks strange, concave and covered in sutures.  His sternum and ribs were crushed by a cannon ball, and it is pure, dumb luck that Tony wasn’t torn through by the projectile.

As the morning wears on, it becomes increasingly obvious that Tony’s luck has run out.  Bruce, the doctor on the _Vengeance,_ did his best.  So did Santivi, who was the medic on Steve’s ship, the _Soldier’s_ _Howl,_ until the three-sided battle in the pre-dawn light which had sunk both the _Howl_ and the _Hydra’s Talons,_ forcing the _Howl’s_ crew to cross to the _Vengeance_ or else swim for a very long time.  But even between the two of them, the docs couldn’t manage much more than what Bruce called a “patch”.  

Just after mid-day, Doc Santivi very, very gently, suggests that Bucky say his goodbyes.  Natasha steps between them only barely in time to stop Bucky from punching Santivi in the face.

After that, there’s only one more thing Bucky can think of to do.  

He has no idea when, where or  _ how  _ Tony got the thing, but there is a small device locked into place on their bookshelf that Bucky once asked Tony about, back when they first got together.  It looks like two pieces of wood separated by twisted loops of wires, holding between them a lizard’s egg, which is soaked in resin to preserve it.  When Tony told him what the contraption was, Bucky had barely been able to believe him...  but he is by God going to try to use the damned thing now!

He snags the strange, magical mechanism off the shelf and slips out of the cabin, leaving Tony death-rattling behind him on the bed the two of them have shared for the last three years.  Heads turn as Bucky works his way up onto the poop deck, and someone calls for Steve.  Steve takes one look at Bucky’s face and starts running for him.  He can’t possibly know what the device Bucky’s carrying does, but he probably figures it’s nothing good.  He’s too slow, though: Bucky reaches the rail before Steve reaches him and hurls the device into the ocean.  

The role of Davy Jones is, so far as anyone knows, no longer held by Davy Jones.  It hasn’t been held by Davy Jones in years, in fact—not since the early half of the last century—and since the original Jones, no one has wanted the job.  It means being locked away from the living, being alone in the watery depths...  Immortal, yes, but not in any way a sane man might crave.  People typically have to be tricked into taking the cursed ship.  

But the role  _ does  _ come with some perks, as well as a responsibility to ferry the drowning dead, and the powers over life and death are two of them.  There are conditions, caveats, of course; the current Jones can’t just lay waste to a whole army, he has to win it.  But he  _ can  _ bolster the dying or wound the vigorous, long enough for nature to take over, and in this case, that’s just as good.

Particularly the “bolster the dying” part.  

The storm rises over the  _ Vengeance  _ faster than Bucky could have dreamed, swirling in like a flock of ravens, the clouds seeming to lower until the rain and fog were writhing around them.  No lighting, thankfully—although from the warmth and closeness of the air around him, it’s only a matter of time—but the rain comes down so thickly it’s almost impossible to see in front of him, and the crew cry out below him in confusion.  

Steve charges up from behind him and grabs his arm, spinning him around and shouting into his face—the only way Bucky was going to be able to hear him in the gale.  “WHAT DID YOU DO?” he screams.  “SHE CAN’T TAKE THIS RIGHT NOW!”

Bucky shakes the rain out of his eyes and knocks Steve’s hand away from him, shoving Steve hard in the chest.  “I’M NOT GOING TO LOSE HIM,” he shouts back, “I DON’T CARE WHAT IT TAKES!”  

“IF THIS KEEPS UP, YOU’RE GOING TO LOSE—”

The wind dies abruptly and Steve’s last words echo in the sudden silence:  “—ALL OF US!”  

He stops talk abruptly, blinking, looking around at the suddenly-still air.  The storm surrounds them like the curtain wall of a castle, but in the eye, they and the sea beneath them are eerily calm.  

The  _ Dutchman  _ glides silently up alongside them, her sails limp and dripping in the lack of wind.  

Steve grimaces and steps back, clapping Bucky on the shoulder as he goes.  Bucky swallows with a throat that feels thick and turns to follow Steve down the stairs to the side of the ship.  

The crew are white-faced and silent as the men pass; hands are tight around ropes, and anyone with a free hand has it resting on a pistol, but they still stand their posts, every one of them.  Bucky feels a swell of pride as he makes his way towards the boarding plank being thrown between the ships.

The man who crosses to their ship is tall and thin, elegantly dressed with a swirling red cape dripping around his shoulders.  His eyes are cold, his manner brusque.  His skin is scaled like a fish’s, and his head is bizarrely stretched out to each side like that of a hammerhead shark.  He wears an exceptionally fancy, if sodden, hat.

“Captain Strange,” he introduces himself, “of the  _ Flying Dutchman— _ but then, you knew that.  You called me; what do you want?”

Bucky works his jaw to get some saliva back in his mouth, then speaks.  “Is it true you hold the power over life and death?” he asks.  “Can you make sure someone lives through a deadly injury.”

“I, more than most—I was a surgeon before I took to the seas,” Strange says.  His tone is matter of fact; he doesn’t appear to consider this a brag.  “But I don’t just walk around healing people; if you want me to restore a wound—your arm, I’m assuming?—then you will need to offer me something in trade, and I should warn you there’s only one thing I want.”

Bucky nods.  “You want off that ship,” he guesses.

Strange dips his head forward and spreads his hands in acknowledgement.  

“Okay; let’s make a deal.”

“Bucky, NO!” Steve bursts out, shouting furiously from behind him.  And God, it’s gonna suck to leave him—even being on two different ships, they had seen each other every couple of months—but if that’s what it takes...

It’s not forever, Bucky promises himself.  Davy Jones,  _ whoever _ serves in the role, gets one day a year to surface and sail where he will.  All the legends agree on that.  Bucky would give his life to save Tony, and that would mean never seeing either one of them again.  

This is better.  

It _ is. _

“I don’t think I asked for your opinion,” Strange says, and suddenly Steve is choking, bending over and vomiting what look like shrimp all over the deck—dead ones, thankfully.  

Bucky looks back at Strange, astonished; Strange shrugs.  “It’s a simple replication spell,” he says, “on... whatever the last thing he ate was.”  

“You’re a surgeon  _ and  _ an enchanter?”

“Technically, not an enchanter; a  _ wizard. _ ”

Steve vomits up another round of seafood, his eyes glaring a protest.  

“Right,” Bucky says, refocusing on the important part.  “My husband is dying,” he tells Strange.  “Save his life.  If he’s still alive at sundown tomorrow—”  It was just after noon now, although dark enough from the clouds that it was difficult to see; that gives Bucky a day and half.  “—then I’ll take your place, and you can take mine.  The  _ Vengeance  _ will have to go to port in Tortuga to restock; we’ll let you off there.”

“You mean  _ they  _ will;  _ you  _ won’t be here, anymore.”

Strange may be rude, but he speaks as if his success is a foregone conclusion, and that’s all Bucky cares about.  Strange is already moving onto the ship, the crew stepping out of his way rather quicker than they really need to.  

Bucky, heart pounding in his chest with worry and fear, leads the way to where Tony is resting.

 

* * *

 

Tony cries when Bucky tells him that night, cries in a still, silent way because anything more probably hurts like hell.  He’s still wounded, still trapped in the bed because even trying to sit up is too agonizing to complete; but his wounds are all closed and sealing themselves cleanly, and the awful concavity of his chest, the one which was so terrifying when Bucky first saw it, is... better, at least.  Not fixed, but better.  

That’s all that matters, Bucky thinks over and over again, even as he, Steve, and Natasha—Steve’s first mate—plan what will happen with the remains of the  _ Soldier’s Howl’s  _ crew.  

 

* * *

 

Eventually, they work it out:  Steve is going to take Bucky’s place, stepping into the role of First Mate on aboard the  _ Vengeance.   _ Natasha, along with the rest of the  _ Howl’s  _ crew, will have the length of the trip back to port to decide whether to stay as crew under Tony, or leave.  Bucky hopes they mostly stay; they’re a good crew.

“And then there’s that other matter,” Steve says.  They’re in the rigging, all three of them, casually hanging there, legs twined through the ropes like swing-chairs because they don’t want to disturb Tony until he’s completely out of the woods.  Bucky feels time passing like a death rattle.  It’s not long after dawn right now; he has thirteen hours left.

“Yeah?”  

“Yeah.”  Steve scowls at the horizon, not looking at Bucky.  “There’s figuring out how to get you  _ out  _ of the  _ Dutchman  _ deal.”  

“Sure,” Bucky snorts.  “You have any ideas, I’m all ears!”  He shakes his head to try to expunge the weird feeling there—which he can’t, because the weird feeling is from his new gills.  They sprouted on his neck the day before, promptly at sundown, and they make him feel oddly breathless whenever he breathes too hard.

Steve scowls more furiously and doesn’t say anything.

“It’s a magical contract,” Natasha says softly, gently squeezing Steve’s bicep.  “That’s not the kind of deal you want to go breaking, especially not when your husband is an enchanter.  Magic pays attention to deals involving enchanters.”  

“And it’s not the kind of deal I’m gonna risk,” Bucky adds, “not when Tony’s life hangs in the balance.”

Steve’s jaw twitches.  It’s kind of cute, in a dumb sort of way.  “Can’t you claim duress?” he asks.  “That’s what the Catholics do:  ‘Oh, I was coerced, I didn’t want to marry her!’ and  _ poof  _ your marriage gets annulled.”

Natasha rolls her eyes.  “I don’t think that’s actually how that process goes.”  

“Why can’t you do that?” Steve insists.  “Just... say you didn’t have a choice!”

“He  _ still  _ doesn’t have a choice.”  Natasha isn’t being cruel; she’s just stating a fact, one Steve has apparently missed.  

Bucky doesn’t even raise his voice; he’s not angry, just... tired.  “Doesn’t work like that, Steve.  The Catholics can do what they want, but magic doesn’t usually care about coercion.”

“How do you know?”  Steve doesn’t sound angry anymore, either; he just sounds miserable.  Bucky pokes him in the shoulder and waits until he looks over and meets his eyes to answer.

“Pillow talk,” he says deadpan.

It takes a moment, but Steve does eventually laugh.  It’s the most exhausted and defeated laugh Bucky’s ever heard from him, though, and Bucky makes his excuses, leaving Nat to wrap an arm around Steve and hold him until he accepts it.

 

* * *

 

“What about a priest?”

“A  _ priest?!” _

“You don’t think this counts as a curse?  You could try getting exorcised; the whole ship would just... go into the light.”

Bucky leans his head back and glares.  Nine hours left, and Steve is wasting his time with  _ this  _ shit?  “And if it doesn’t work?” he demands.  “I’m  _ still  _ not going to risk Tony, Steve.  And besides...”

He leans back against the headboard and runs his hand through Tony’s hair.  It’s soft against his fingers; Bucky had washed it for him, earlier, with a series of cloths and towels.  Bucky’s own hair is limp and heavy against his chin and neck, but he doesn’t particularly care about that; in a day and a half, it won’t matter.

“Besides?” Steve prompts.  His arms swing awkwardly at his sides, as if he wants to cross them but doesn’t want to offend.  

Bucky shakes his head and watches thick brown locks sift through his fingers.  “Not enough time,” he says hoarsely.

Steve doesn’t respond, and after a moment, Bucky hears the door click shut.

 

* * *

 

“Okay, what about this?” Steve proposes.  He is sitting at Tony’s secretary desk, knees too high because Steve is notably too large for Tony’s chair.  Nat is on the plush carpet at his feet, knitting something delicate out of filigree-sized yarn.   “You say there’s no way to default, right?”

“Not without losing Tony,” Natasha answers for Bucky as Bucky shakes his head in agreement.  His new gills catch with the movement.  

Three hours left. 

He’s on the bed, fully dressed save for his shoes, with his legs crossed tailor-style and Tony’s head in his lap.  Tony is awake, but drowsy, his eyes blinking slowly and the blankets—which they hardly even use, considering the temperate climate—pulled up around his chin.  He looks adorable, and Bucky is memorizing the sight, storing it away to tide him over during the long upcoming year.

“And there’s no way to sneak your way out of it, wiggle the terms...?”

Bucky shakes his head as Tony nuzzles sleepily further into his lap.  “Not.  Without.  Losing.  Tony,” he repeats.  He rests his hand on Tony’s hair, partially to stop him from moving; if Tony nuzzles any further, Natasha’s gonna get one hell of a show.

“So what about going  _ through,  _ then?” 

Bucky frowns and looks away from Tony for a second, frowning over at Steve.  “What?”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, too.

Steve smirks at them, and right before Bucky can say anything about that that he’d regret, Tony raises his head, hazy but awake.  “Tell me more,” he demands.

Steve leans forward, and does.

 

* * *

 

 

**PETER**

_(four months later)_

 

Peter is very clear about this:  he  _ is not  _ a stowaway.  Stowaways are  _ leeches  _ on the resources of the ship, they do not belong there, they do not contribute; Peter contributes!  He’s a... cabin boy, or something.  He climbs the rigging and throws ropes to people; apparently, on a ship, that’s contributing!  Jones, the other cabin boy—cabin girl in her case, maybe?—rolls her eyes at him, but she didn’t argue when he announced he was working next to her now, and she makes sure he gets food, so Peter figures she’s on his side.  

Jones also doesn’t call Peter out on the whole “binding” situation, which Peter is grateful for, but Doc Banner  _ does, _ so it doesn’t really matter.  Peter snuck on with his chest all bound up, and figured it would last, but it turns out that salt water gets  _ literally everywhere  _ when you’re on a ship, and also that binding for a long period at a time is  _ really uncomfortable,  _ and all things considered it’s not long before Peter’s bandages smell worse than the latrines they don’t have—apparently, on a ship, you just stick your rear over the edge?  Peter feels like he should have anticipated this, but he did not, and it is decidedly nerve-wracking the first time he tries it—so, long story short, Peter has to go to the surgeon’s quarters to get more bandages because Jones said she wouldn’t bunk next to him anymore if he doesn’t.

Doc Banner catches him immediately—that guy is  _ way  _ more observant than he looks—and puts a kibosh on using any more bandages.  He doesn’t report Peter, though, either as being secretly a girl  _ or  _ as being a stowaway; he just promises Peter that he’ll make him a little vest to do the binding instead, as long as Peter takes it off to sleep, and that seems like a pretty good deal so Peter takes it.

The next day, Peter sees Doc Banner talking to Captain Stark and his first mate, Steve Rogers, and all three men turn to look at Peter.  Peter feels his eyes go wide and scurries up the rigging, away from them, although he guesses all three men are capable of coming after him.  They don’t, though; instead, they just go about their business, and Peter is left feeling alarmed and squirrel-like—bushy-tailed, whatever—for the rest of the day.  

One night passes, and then another, and Peter’s certainty that at any moment someone is going to scruff him and carry him to the brig fades.

“They’re not going to throw you in the brig,” Jones says.  

Jones’ Christian name is Michelle, but she hasn’t given Peter permission to use it.  Peter kind of thinks she likes being just  _ Jones.   _ She sounds like she thinks Peter’s an idiot, which—fair.  “You don’t even get paid, officially.  We take a ship? Too bad, you’re not getting any booty, because you didn’t ask to come on board.  So why should they kick you out?”

She has a good point.

“Pass me the stew.”

Peter passes her the stew.

 

* * *

 

“I think we might be chasing something,” Peter says.

Ned looks over at him.  They are sitting in the crow’s nest together, ordinarily the windiest part of the ship.  There is a spectacular  _ lack  _ of wind, so it’s still hot as hell, the sun baking them both into lazy, stupidly-blinking pancakes.  They are distracting themselves by bullshitting.  

“We’re not chasing anything,” Ned says.  “We’ve literally been within the same league of ocean for two days.  We are—again, literally—dead in the water.”  

This is true.  The sea has been becalmed for what feels like ages, but has actually only been three days.  The first one wasn’t so bad—the sails had periodically blown lazily full again, and their progress had been real, if limping—but the last two days have been  _ awful,  _ bored men growing cruel to each other in frustration.  

“No, I mean—cosmically,” Peter says.

_ “Cosmically?!”  _

“Okay, not that either.  I just meant...  Look, the  _ Vengeance  _ doesn’t take every ship she sees, right?  Sometimes, she flies the King’s flag—”

“Captain Stark really is a landowner, down near Kingston,” Ned points out.  “It’s not false colors.”

“I didn’t say it was!  And anyway, I knew that, that’s why I’m here.”

“What?”

“Or—not that, exactly, but...”  Peter trails off, not certain he’s ready to confess this yet, even to Ned, who has been nothing but a friend to Peter, and sometimes, for reasons Peter hasn’t yet been able to figure out, slips Peter some of hard candies he keeps hidden under the outside ballister of the nest.  

Luckily, Peter doesn’t have confess anything.  “You want to learn magic from him,” Ned says, and he figured it out,  _ of course  _ he figured it out, Ned is  _ crazy smart,  _ but what if he tells someone, what if he tells  _ Captain Stark...?! _

“It’s cool,” Ned says.  “I won’t tell.”

Oh.  

_ “Thank you,”  _ Peter says fervently, and Ned waves it off.  

“No problem.”  And then, in his humble way, he adds, “No reason for them to listen to me, anyway.”

Peter nods, because it’s a good point:  lookouts don’t really rate any better than cabin boys.  

Cabin people.  

Whatever.

“You said you think we’re chasing something?”

“Oh!  Yeah.  So, sometimes, we spot a ship, and we just let them go, right?  But sometimes, we spot a ship, and we hoist the black flag, and  _ boom!   _ Blow ‘em out of the water.  What’s the difference, Ned?”  Ned had given Peter permission to call him that within minutes of meeting him.  Peter really likes Ned.  _  “I _ think we’re picking and choosing.   _ I _ think we’re hunting a specific trading company, or one of the Lords backing the trading companies, or  _ something. _  That’s what I think.”

“It’s the  _ Hydra,”  _ says Jones. __ Jones is hanging out in the rigging below them, eavesdropping.  (Peter doesn’t mind; Jones is always hanging around him, for some reason.)  Her long hair looks like it kind of wants to move in the breeze, but it’s not much of a breeze even up here by the crow’s nest, so the only part of it that actually moves is just the ends, flipping themselves up and over and then going back to hanging down.  Peter thinks she looks beautiful, but he knows better than to ever, ever say it.

“The  _ Hydra?”  _ he asks instead. __ “Isn’t that a myth?”

“Not the creature,” Ned explains.  His eyes have gone wide at the suggestion, and he looks respectful, almost awed, by Jones’ claim.  “The ship.  Or,  _ ships _ , actually.”

“What ships?”  Peter leans forward over the edge of the nest to include Jones in the conversation, folding his arms over the small ledge that rims it.  

“The Many-Headed Hydra,” Jones explains.  “There’s a bunch of them: the  _ Hydra’s Neck,  _ the  _ Hydra’s Talons,  _ the  _ Hydra’s Scales...” _

“They’re part of a shipping network,” Ned adds.  “Owned by some rich noble from up near Boston.”

“Well, not anymore,” Peter says automatically.  Ned and Jones both look at him, eyebrows raised.  “Revolution, remember?  Happened like twenty years ago...?  Americans aren’t nobles anymore; he’s just a man, now.”

“No, I think he’s still a Lord,” Ned says thoughtfully.  “Maybe he was born in Boston, but he lives in England?  Anyway, I think  _ he  _ thinks he’s still a Lord.  He’s got oodles of ships, and everyone gets this hushed tone when they talk about him.  They call him  _ Admiral Pierce,  _ and the Hydra’s the biggest shipping empire on the sea.”

“Mostly slaves,” Jones says darkly.  Peter looks at her skin and wonders, but then shrugs mentally:  none of his business.  Jones looks up at Peter and obviously knows what he’s thinking, but doesn’t say anything about it.  “Anyway, that’s why we go after the  _ Hydra,” _ she tells them matter-of-factly.  “That’s what this ship  _ is.   _ We free slaves; always.  Everything else comes in second to that.”

 

* * *

 

Peter thinks that sounds great _ ;  _ slavery is evil, everyone knows that, even the people who claim it’s necessary admit it’s pretty evil, and there’s nothing wrong with capturing ships to free slaves.  (Other than the part where it’s illegal.  He really, really hates that it’s illegal; if he gets hung for a pirate, Aunt May will definitely cry.)  

And then one day they’re taking a ship, and the slavers they’re fighting throw burning timbers down in the cargo hold rather than letting the slaves escape.  

It’s... pretty horrible.  

It only happens one time.  Afterwards, they change course and head straight back into port in Kingston.  Captain Stark puts command of the ship into Rogers’ hands just like he does during a battle—Rogers is calm and generally willing to follow Captain Stark’s commands, but during battle, all the men follow Rogers because Rogers is  _ fucking amazing  _ at naval strategy, and they all know it—and Stark and Doc Banner head out.  They don’t say where they’re going, but Peter knows, anyway, because he grew up around here:  Stark has an estate about fifteen miles outside of town.  Peter takes the time on land to swing by and see his Auntie, who still lives in their small apartment near the barracks where Uncle Ben used to work.  He spends two days telling Aunt May excitedly about his new friends and all the things he’s seen, and showing Aunt May his new binder, which she approves of even as she’s baffled by it.  Then he gets back to the ship, because he doesn’t want to miss it when Stark comes back.  

Stark  _ does  _ come back, most of a week later—their shipping bills are forgeries, but damned good forgeries, or else they would all be in  _ serious  _ trouble, spending that long in port looking so much like pirates.  Stark is a lot lighter in spirit when he comes back than he was when he left, Peter notices.  

They sail out again, their next trip home scheduled some six months in the future.

The next time the  _ Vengeance  _ captures another ship, Captain Stark formally hands off command to Rogers and barricades himself in the captain’s quarters to cast his spells.  Usually, when they take a ship, the Captain sends his powers up into the air and the sea, wresting control of the wind and tides from whatever weatherwitch their prey might have on board; this time, though, the first spell the Captain casts serves to barricade the other ship’s hold door.  No one comes up, no one goes down, and the first time some slaver tries, Peter and the other members of the  _ Vengeance’s  _ crew have the horrifying experience of watching the doorway  _ itself  _ come alive and devour the man.  It is deeply disgusting: his bones crack like old crossbeams and his brain flops out of his skull to roll gelatinously across the deck; his intestines weren’t initially devoured, but the doorway slurps them up like noodles.

After that, no one attempts to slaughter the “cargo.”

 

* * *

 

Peter has been on board the  _ Vengeance  _ for about eight months when the mood on the ship starts to change.  That’s happened before—setbacks causing a depressive fog over the ship, or long periods of boredom leading to ridiculousness—but from what Peter can tell, there’s nothing causing it this time.  No change in the weather, or the loot, or the action, or even their course, but, all of a sudden, the mood on board the ship lightens.  The men begin acting silly, the raucous laughter getting louder, the inane bets and contests more ridiculous.  

It comes to a head when Captain Stark steps out of his quarters one day, only to see two men engaged in what would be called sword fighting, except that in lieu of swords the men are using fish skeletons, stiffened with pitch and attached to their heads with ropes; they have their hands clasped behind their backs.  Rather than exploding in fury, though, Captain Stark just laughs.  It is  _ bizarre. _

Even Jones and Ned seem to have caught the celebratory tone.  (From  _ nothing.  _  That’s the weird part, Peter reminds himself; that there is  _ no reason  _ for this weird lightness.  It’s not that he  _ minds,  _ it’s that—oh, forget it.)  Ned sneaks a flask of rum up, and Jones and Peter bring up some of Cook’s fresh-made rolls, and they all sit up in the crow’s nest laughing and making bets about who can get down to the deck the fastest.  

It’s going to be Peter, who goes last because he’s going to  _ cheat,  _ just dropping straight down with a stay line attached to his wrist.  And when he tries it, it works, too; Peter makes it down in about five seconds.  He somersaults about three times to keep from breaking anything, then rises to his feet mingled jeering from Jones and Ned and the other men gathered around, but First Mate Rogers is standing ten feet away, shouting and clapping along with everyone else, so Peter just throws his hands up in the air, grinning so hard his eyes are closed, and pretends it all went smoothly.  

The sky had been clear, the wind about five knots—so enough to ruffle hair and some clothes—south-southwest.  But as Peter raises his face towards the sky, a fat raindrop strikes his cheek.  He blinks his eyes open in confusion.

The clouds are moving in  _ fast— _ much, much faster than anything natural, and the wind smacks into them like a wall, so hard Peter sees men stumble sideways.  His eyes widen as the clouds swirl above the ship like a waterspout.  If they actually wind up in the eye of a hurricane, they’re dead; no magic, not even  _ Captain Stark’s  _ magic, can control a storm like that.  

But the men don’t seem concerned; rather than everybody bursting into action, a ragged cheer goes up from all over the ship.  Some men hit their posts, securing lines and cutting the sails— _ cutting  _ them?  They’re not going to try to outrun the storm...?—but the rest rush to the rails, cheering.

_ “What _ is going on?” Peter asks aloud, totally baffled.  

Jones grins and slings her arms around his neck.  “It’s the  _ Flying Dutchman,”  _ she says cheerfully.  

Peter stares at her, then shoves her arm off him in a hurry.  “Say you’re joking,” he demands.

She raises an eyebrow.  “I’m not joking.  What, you didn’t know this?  I figured you’d worked it out.  Figured that was why you picked us.”

“No!”  Peter whips his head around just in time to see the tip of a sail rising up from the depths, swirling around the waterspout the storm had called up.  “No, I did  _ not  _ know this!  I wouldn’t  _ be here  _ if I knew this!   _ Why the hell aren’t we running?!” _

“He’s not trying to capture us,” Ned says.  His voice is gentle and calm, and that, more than anything, starts to calm Peter’s panic.  “That’s not how this goes.”

“Then  _ why—?” _  Peter stops talking as he hears his own voice, hears the pitch of the question slide upward.  He is not going to cry, he is  _ not!   _ He swallows it down and hits Ned with a confused look.

“He’s here for the Captain,” Ned explains.

Peter is not less alarmed by this.

Jones rolls her eyes at both of them.  “For the Captain’s  _ ass,  _ you mean.  Pete, he’s Stark’s  _ husband, _ okay?  He gets one day a year to walk among the living, and he’s here to spend it with Captain Stark.”

“You mean...?”  

“Yeah.  They’re gonna bone.”

 

* * *

 

The  _ Dutchman  _ rises above the waters with a groan that echoes over the sea, deeper and somehow more haunted than any wood has a right to be.  Her sides are covered with barnacles and seaweed, the crew matching her with starfish and mollusks clinging to their faces and torsos.  

Peter gets a really good look from twenty feet up the rigging, and he’s definitely not just up there because he scrambled away in terror at the first sight of the ship, either.  Ned is right up there beside him, but Jones just snorts and crosses her arms, looking up at the two of them in disgust.

The  _ Dutchman’s  _ captain is a tall man, taller than Captain Stark by about the breadth of a hand, with long brown hair that hangs around him like a veil, long enough to touch his hips, dark, loose, and wet.  His eyes are difficult to see at this distance, but his jacket is charcoal-colored, soaked but still obviously well made.  His thighs are thick and strongly muscular, his shoulders broad.  His shirt is so fine as to be completely translucent, and for the first time it occurs to Peter to wonder what the man had been  _ before  _ he was the  _ Dutchman’s  _ captain.  

“Does he have a name?” Peter whispers to Ned.

“Barnes,” Ned whispers back.  “James Barnes, but everyone called him Bucky.”  

Peter frowns.  It’s hard to justify this much fear for a guy who goes by  _ Bucky.   _

“Jones used to be on his crew.”

Peter is  _ considerably  _ disconcerted by this revelation.

“Not like that,” Ned adds.  “Back when he sailed under Rogers—Captain Rogers back then—on the  _ Soldier’s Howl.”   _

Peter frowns.  “Wasn’t the  _ Soldier’s Howl  _ sunk by, uh... us?”  Peter’s pretty sure that’s what rumor had said.

Ned shakes his head.  He still hasn’t looked away from the  _ Dutchman,  _ which is sending out boarding lines to secure the two ships together, now.  “We were there, too, but no—it was the  _ Hydra  _ again, the  _ Hydra’s Gullet  _ this time.  We sank her afterward, but before that, Captain Stark got shot right in the chest.”  

“Wow!” Peter breathes.  “With a rifle?”

“No, with a cannon.”

Peter isn’t quite convinced he heard that one correctly.  

“I’m telling you, it’s real,” Ned insists.  “The powder was damp, it didn’t spark correctly, so the ball was only going about as fast as a man could throw it when it hit the Captain.  But that’s still pretty bad when the thing doing the hitting is a  _ cannon ball, _ you know?  Crushed his breastbone into powder.  They had to put a plate inside him and attach his ribs to it with screws, after, and even then he was still almost dying.  Barnes traded his freedom for Captain Stark’s life.”

“Kind of ironic, when you consider we exclusively fight slavers.”  Jones has given up and joined them in the rigging, after all.  

“That’s... awful,” Peter says, looking at the tall man stepping down onto their ship.

His hair and garb are soaked; his eyes are pale, but rimmed with dark coal, and his skin glimmers in pale shades of blue and green with iridescence like scales.  A single red starfish clings to his left arm, high on his coat near the shoulder; his sword is sheathed, but there are so many more knives and firearms fastened about him that it hardly makes him less of a threat.  His shoes make an unpleasant squelching sound when he steps.

He is, despite it all, a strikingly handsome man, and Peter really can’t blame Captain Stark for moving forward immediately to embrace him.  

The embrace is both long and tender.  Captain Stark appears completely oblivious to the soaking his own clothes are getting—and that is, Peter notices belatedly, the Captain’s best shirt and jacket.  

The two men kiss like a benediction, eyelids fluttering closed.  Barnes’ right hand is shaking where it brushes the Captain’s cheek; Stark’s knuckles are white in the wet gray linen of Barnes’ shirt.  When it’s done, Captain Stark presses his forehead into the curve of Barnes’ neck, and Barnes presses him in with the same hand, gently comforting, against the back of his neck.  The other arm is pulled back, the sleeve hanging oddly as if over a stump, and Peter wonders if Barnes might not have had it amputated.  It happens often enough, in war.

The  _ Vengeance  _ has gone reverentially quiet.  

And then, from the  _ Dutchman,  _ a voice calls, “CAPTAIN BARNES!” and a ragged cheer goes up.  First Mate Rogers, standing beside the two captains but at a discrete distance of two feet away, grins a painful, proud smile.  

“I see you’re still a favorite among the men,” he says dryly, and Barnes gives him a  _ look,  _ a very  _ I came back to life for one day in a whole year, and you’re using it to give me shit?  _ kind of look.  Peter realizes abruptly that if Barnes served under Rogers on the  _ Soldier’s Howl,  _ the two men must know each other well; by the looks of things, they were even friends.  Rogers beams at Barnes in response, still looking vaguely melancholy but covering it well.

Barnes pries his hand off Captain Stark’s head at the same time Captain Stark pulls back and to the side, pivoting like a dancer so that he and Barnes are standing side by side.  Captain Stark has his hand on Barnes’ back, possessive and, given how close he is to the rear so neatly displayed by clinging, soaked trousers, remarkably restrained.  

(It’s, uh...  It’s a very nice rear.  Peter’s not sure he could hold back half so well, in Stark’s place.)

Barnes and Rogers shake hands, then step closer and also embrace like brothers.  Barnes’ sleeve still covers his left arm, and again Peter wonders what might have happened to the limb.  Rogers gives Barnes a little shake as he pulls away, the sort of shake a man gives when his friend—or brother—has gotten into one heck of a scrape and just barely managed to pull himself out. The affection is obvious even from the midmast.

“I never figured out why Barnes went,” Ned says as they’re watching.  Jones hitches herself up another level on the ropes and turns to look at him, her eyes curious, but says nothing.

“What do you mean?” 

Peter bites his lip, trying to watch Ned as he answers  _ and  _ the action down below, both at the same time.  

“Stark’s an enchanter,” Ned shrugs.  “Shouldn’t he just magic his husband off of the  _ Dutchman?” _

“You can’t break a magical bargain,” Jones says.  She rolls her eyes at Ned, even though Peter quietly thinks it was a good question.  “That’s even more true for enchanters than for normal folks.”

Below them, the three men—Barnes, Rogers, and Stark—all lean in close, conferring in whispers too soft for even Peter’s excellent hearing to pick up for a minute.  When they’re done, they pull back, and Stark deliberately, elaborately, takes off his fancy hat and hands it over to Rogers.  

“The  _ Vengeance  _ is yours!” he declares, his voice big and ringing over the water, carrying easily beyond the two ships.  “From now, until either my husband leaves my side once again—or we have received word that he need never do so!”

The ships both cheer again, men throwing their hands into the air.  Ned, Jones, and Peter join them, although Peter’s not too sure what the big deal is.  He guesses Rogers is good to work under—less eccentric than Stark, that was for sure, but also more of a stickler for protocols.  

“Fancy,” Peter says.

“Told you,” Jones answers.  Her voice is matter of fact as, below them, Stark leads Barnes directly towards the captain’s cabin which is technically, if you looked at it square on, no longer his to use.  “They’re not cheering ‘cause they like Rogers, Parker.  They’re cheering ‘cause they like Stark, and he and Barnes?”

The captain’s cabin door opened and then, with two bodies freshly admitted, closed again.  The latching of the lock, deliberately never oiled as a precaution against thievery, carries audibly over the soft splashing of the waves against the hull.  Amid the final cheer that follows the noise, Jones leans towards Peter’s ear with a smirk.

“They’re about to get laid for the first time in over a year.”

 

* * *

 

TONY

 

“It’s not gonna work,” Bucky predicts as the door closes behind them.  

Tony rolls his eyes, and locks it—a cheer goes up from them other side—and turns to face his husband, arms crossed over his chest.  “It’ll work,” he insists.   _ We haven’t talked in twelve months,  _ he smiles to himself,  _ but we can pick up the argument as if there’s been no time at all; Jesus, I love this man! _

“Darlin’, the only reason I am going along with this is that you and Steve are the two of the three most cunning men I know, and the third one didn’t disagree with your plan.  But from my perspective?  I don’t think it’s gonna work.”

Tony frowns, pulling absently at the buttons of his jacket—stiflingly hot in the late-summer tropical heat, but then, he hadn’t been planning to wear it for long.  “Who’s the third?”

Bucky shoots him a look.  

“Not technically a man,” Tony points out.  

He ignores the eyeroll this gets him and starts peeling out of his jacket, hanging it from the back of the chair pushed under the secretary on the far side of the room.  Or in other words, a whole four feet away.  It’s a small room—even the captain’s cabin is, perforce, cabin-like—but it holds all the essentials:  a desk, maps, a cabinet with all of his enchanting supplies locked into place, a hip bath secured under the cabinet (it can be pulled out and used during calm seas), and, most relevant to this  _ particular  _ moment, a bed.  One that Tony knows for certain is big enough, and comfortable enough, for two.

Tony’s shirt follows his jacket, and then he steps out of his shoes—shoes, not boots, because the last thing you want if you fall in the water is a footful of wet leather that clings and won’t come off.  But, although he never hears Bucky move—he never will—between the removal of his stockings and the loosening of his belt, a wide, wet arm wraps around him, a body pressing up against his.  

Tony gasps.  “You’re cold,” he says, “cold and wet.”  But it’s not a real protest, and they both know it.  

“I am.” Bucky’s voice is sweet in his ear, agreeable and amused, and ohhh, that is a  _ good  _ sign!  “Warm me up, darlin’?”

“Always,” Tony breathes, and then he’s spinning in Bucky’s arms—moving on his own or pushed, he’s not sure which.  He doesn’t  _ care  _ which.  He’s kissing his husband, and it is so, so welcome at last.  

They kiss like strangers and old lovers, both at once, tender and ardent.  “Been too long,” Bucky says against his mouth, and Tony whimpers, pushing in closer in agreement.  

There’s a scent...  Not fishy, but a faint, clean, saltwater thing, green and blue and seductive, a scent which has always called Tony away from the stable shores of his Jamaican manse...  It’s lurking in Bucky’s skin now, that smell, sneaking out in low company with the leather and gun-oil trappings of him.  

Tony breathes deep, teeth grazing against Bucky’s ear before tracking a row of kisses back across his cheek.  “Too long,” he echoes before nipping at Bucky’s lip.  “You’re not kidding.”  He gathers up Bucky’s wet, hip-length veil of hair in his hands, coiling it together and squeezing—he hears the water pouring out of it onto his floor—then pulls the tail over Bucky’s shoulder, measuring its length.  “Your hair was shorter when you went away,” he accuses.  

“It grows,” Bucky shrugs.  “And—I guess without you around, weren’t no one to look dapper for.”

Tony pauses, narrowing his eyes, passing the tail over and under his hands, feeling the one-directional silkiness of it.  “...And you like it,” he finishes.

Bucky grins, that sweet, trouble-maker’s smile that always made Tony’s heart turn over and thump, thump,  _ thump  _ in his chest.  “And I like it,” he agrees.  

He lifts his hand and gently pulls  _ Tony’s  _ hand away from his hair, lifting it to his lips, kissing the fingers and palms and running his cheek over it.  He’s clean shaven, giving the lie to the claim he just made about not primping.

Tony feels his eyelids grow heavy, falling shut against the urgent throb of desire sparking through him.  The scars on his chest are aching with the pounding of his blood.  “Bucky,” he starts, but then stops again, too many needs pressing up at once, each one clamoring louder than the next.  “Bucky, I need—”

_ —need you.  Need your lips, your mouth, your arms, both of them, each one differently—split me open on your tongue, your fingers—let me take you apart with my mouth, let me suck you down, let me choke on you— _

“I know,” Bucky growls.  His hand drops to Tony’s belt, working the leather open roughly, pulling the flies of his trousers apart hard enough to tear a couple of the buttons off.  Tony can hear them pinging around the cabin.  He pushes trousers and belt down together, and then Tony is stepping out of them, naked as the day he was born—although, he thinks with an internal grin, considerably improved in many ways since then!

He doesn’t worry about his scars—or at least, not much.  It’s not like standing next to Steve; Bucky has his own scars.  Bucky will understand.

He clenches his jaw and raises his gaze, meeting Bucky’s eyes.  Then he immediately relaxes and grins, because it’s  _ Bucky,  _ and that means it’s  _ easy,  _ and...

...well, long story short: Bucky is  _ not  _ looking at his scars!  

“Okay, then,” Tony says.  His voice comes out a lot more amused than he meant it to, but that’s alright.  It’s Bucky, and that’s safe.  

“I’m a lover of nature,” Bucky answers his unspoken critique, his hand coming up to cup Tony’s hip.  “I’m distracted by the natural wonders all around me.”

“That sounds very peaceful.”

“Oh, it is.”  Bucky hasn’t looked up yet, not even as far as Tony’s navel, much less far enough to see the ruin of his chest.  He’s watching his fingers walk along Tony’s hip.  “I get to watch a lot of ocean—almost entirely ocean these days, to be honest—but in the past I’ve enjoyed some very nice bushes.”

Tony laughs, his amusement overcoming the last of his reunion-induced nerves.

“And hey, look—there’s a mountain!”  Bucky steps towards him again, crowding him in against the secretary, reaching down and gripping him firmly in a hand that moves over him smoothly, the callouses all stolen away by the magic that gave him slippery, piscine skin.  

Tony yelps—not too loud, because sound often carries on the ocean—and kisses his husband hard, mouth moving possessively now, claiming.  He deepens the kiss, sweeping inward even as Bucky smoothes a thumb over the head of his cock.  Tony squeezes his eyes tightly and takes a bracing breath, not because he’s close to coming—he’s not, not so soon, anyway—it’s that Bucky occasionally makes it  _ very hard to concentrate,  _ but Tony still has some  _ goals,  _ here.

He presses his whole body closer to Bucky, swaying into him, making the kiss dirty, wet and sucking.  He tears his mouth away only to take Bucky’s jaw between his teeth, biting gently until Bucky’s knees buckle and his spine bends.  He licks Bucky’s cheek, wet and filthy, tasting the not-quite-brine taste again before pressing his lips in gentle, barely-there kisses over the wet mark he has just left.  

Bucky groans.  “C’mon, Tony, won’t you—come on, I  _ need  _ you to—”

Tony grins, fiercely, and drags the scratchy surface of his goatee over Bucky’s skin.  “Yes, darling?”

“Tooony!”

Tony laughs, low and under his breath.  “I want you,” he tells Bucky.  “I want you, want you naked, now, in my bed—where you  _ belong—” _

_ “Yes,”  _ Bucky agrees fervently, too quickly to think, and then he freezes again.

Tony’s eyes narrow, belatedly picking up on some of the oddities of Bucky’s behavior.  The way he hasn’t taken off his coat, the way he’s angling his body away from Tony’’s...  “Were you—?”  He stops, pausing to think it over, running the day through in his mind again.  “Were you trying to  _ distract me from getting you naked  _ using  _ sex  _ as the distraction?”  He squints doubtfully at his husband.  “Maybe after a year you don’t remember how sex  _ works.” _

Bucky doesn’t pale—Tony kind of suspects he can’t blush  _ or  _ blanch with the fish skin thing going on—but he makes the same face he used to make when he was worried.  He steps back, but his knees hit the edge of the bed and bend, causing him to tumble back onto the mattress.  He doesn’t appear to notice.  “I...”  His hand creeps to his shoulder.

Tony remembers, abruptly, the first day after that  _ fucking  _ bargain.  One day a year, Bucky had gotten, but he’d been canny and chosen the first day of each cycle, not the last, and so they had had one more night together before Bucky was forced to sink beneath the waves.  

They had spent their precious hours in bed together—this bed, in fact.  Partially, that was because it had been a choice between this bed and any other horizontal surface:  Tony was out of surgery by that time, but he had still been horribly frail.  His chest had ached horribly, and every breath had felt likely to split it open again.  To add insult to injury, his shoulders and back had been tight from the pain, too, giving him a headache.  They had fed him laudanum, and he had spent much of that last day loopy, distractible and dozy but warm, inside and out, wrapped in Bucky’s arms.  Bucky, in turn, had seemed content to lie next to him, stroking his hair and giving him sips of water or soup if he was hungry.  

Tony had one vivid memory of waking in the middle of the night.  His chest was on fire, his mouth dry, but Bucky had been awake already, watching him, his pale eyes colorless in the moonlight streaming through the porthole.  When he saw Tony’s eyes were open, Bucky had leaned in, pressing a lingering, open-mouthed kiss to the stubble on Tony’s cheek.  

Tony had moaned, trying to shift but it  _ hurt  _ too damned much, and Bucky had whispered to stay still, lie back, it’s okay, Tony, I’ve got you—

He had kissed him, and kissed him, and Tony had kissed him back, and Bucky’s hand had been warm and sure as it wrapped around him, bringing him off.  When he had come, Bucky had tried to clean him up and tuck him in, but Tony had insisted, pressing sweet kisses to the crinkles at the corners of Bucky’s eyes, to his nose, to his cheeks, and Bucky had smiled and given in, rolling over Tony before bringing himself off onto Tony’s stomach, come splattering onto golden skin dusted with dark hair.  

It was a good memory, but playing it back, now, Tony is sure of it:  the changes to Bucky’s appearance had already begun, even then.  His skin wasn’t quite so slick as it is now, but smoother than usual, and his hair had been longer, too, if not the thick, straight cape it is now.  Small signs, but true ones; Tony kicks himself for having missed them.  

And how much  _ more  _ work has the magic done in the last year?  If they can’t break Bucky free of his contract, will he even be recognizable in a decade?

“Take off your clothes,” Tony says flatly. His mouth is dry again, and not just from the memory of the laudanum.  

Bucky flinches, lying strangely passive against the blanket.  Tony clears his throat and repeats it, trying to gentle his tone.  It’s not an order, not really; not to  _ Bucky.   _ It’s a—plea.  Or something.  

“Oh, damn—I mean...  Please, Bucky—take off your jacket.  I know your arm did something; let me just see what we’re working with, here.”  

Bucky lost his arm years ago, before he and Tony had met each other.  It never slowed him down, much; he just stuck a steel plug on the end of it to give it weight and armor, then kept on sailing, kept on fighting.  Tony used to love making him prosthetics, though; they were a good, go-to puzzle for him up until the last year.  He had done clever ones, with guns or knives or in one case a garrotte hidden inside; magical ones, with Tony’s strongest enchantments for luck or protection or, in one case, a false hand.  (Unfortunately, the false hand had stilled and become useless after a few hours, or Bucky might not have taken it off.)  Tony had even made Bucky a fancy one out of solid silver, with rubies and diamonds encrusted.  Bucky had exclaimed over his ridiculousness, but smiled anyway, and Tony’s offer to melt it down and reuse the metal if Bucky wasn’t pleased had been firmly rebuffed.

So Tony knew before now that there would probably something special about Bucky’s arm; it isn’t coming as a shock, or anything.  And thinking back to that night, he does remember Bucky’s stump in particular being a darker shade than the rest of the his body, and bluer; at the time, Tony had chalked it up to Bucky’s tan, and to the moonlight.  

Now, he’s not so sure.  

Bucky’s fingers are trembling as he peels open the buttons on his jacket.  Tony reaches down to help him, sliding it from Bucky’s shoulders before allowing it to fall with a sodden plop to the floor at his feet.  Inside the jacket, Bucky’s shirt is soaked through, translucent but not transparent, clinging to his skin.

His left arm is obviously, brilliantly blue.  

That’s the first thing.  The second thing is less obvious, and only becomes clear after Tony starts looking at textures.  

“Bucky.”

“I know.”  Bucky’s voice is.... It’s bad.  He sounds horrified, mortified,  _ terrified... _  Like he thinks that this—not the year of absence, or the dark past, or the violence inherent in their lives, but  _ this— _ will be the thing that makes Tony leave him.  

It won’t.  Of course it won’t.  None of it will.

But it  _ is  _ startling to realize that his husband now has a tentacle for an arm.  

“I don’t think you do.  Know,I mean.”  Tony reaches out and deftly pops Bucky’s shirt up and over his head.  “Let me see.”

Bucky swallows and nods.  “Look all you like,” he says, resigned.  “Or—okay, or touch, that’s okay too...”  

Tony is already running the pads of his fingers down the periwinkle-colored skin of the—appendage.  It’s much more muscular than it appears, he notices immediately; the flesh under his fingers is firm, evenly dense, and he presses against it with his thumb to no effect.  Only a slight dimple in the surface.  The skin of the... tentacle... is smooth, still wet from the water, and as Tony runs his palm down its surface it becomes noticeably slicker, sweating out a clear, rosey pink mucus.  

There aren’t any sucker cups on it like an octopus might have.  Instead, the bottom has a series of faint ridges—for traction while gripping, presumably, although Tony is not at all confident that this particular morphology is the product of an intelligent creator.  The limb is much longer than the arm was, longer even than the arm would have been, before Bucky’s amputation; Bucky must have coiled it around itself in his sleeve to hide it.  Once Bucky’s shirt is off, though, he allows it to unfurl, stretching to four, maybe even four and half feet.  At the top, near Bucky’s shoulder, the tentacle is almost as thick as Bucky’s arm used to be, but by the end, it narrows to the width of—

Tony blinks, and then blinks again.

Well, yo ho ho: that  _ is  _ rather suggestive, isn’t it...?

Tony runs his hand down the tentacle again, and more rosey mucous leaks out, coating his hand like oil, or like—

“Bucky,” Tony says.  He’s mildly appalled at himself for feeling it, but the arousal is real. Partly it’s driven by curiosity, but more by a desire to make Bucky proud of his body again—and by the always-familiar desire to drive Bucky absolutely crazy, in the best of ways.  In a trance, Tony raises his glistening palm to his mouth and reaches out his tongue, tasting with just the very tip of it.  

He tastes the sea, again, and also something else underneath, something like muskmelon.  He groans and runs his hand down the tentacle, from shoulder all the way to the tip, coating his hand in the mucus.  

_ “Tony, _ ” Bucky says.  His voice is shocked and filthy, as if Tony has just stuck the entire tentacle in his mouth, and considering that Bucky had once sucked his own jism out of Tony’s ass that’s saying something.  “Tony, oh god, please—”

Apparently, the tentacle is sensitive.  Tony raises up the end of it in both hands, studying the play of light over it—the tip curls up towards his face, the angle of it somehow looking entreating, and it occurs to Tony to wonder how much control Bucky has over it—and then he raises the tentacle to his mouth and kisses it closed-mouthed.

It’s firm under his lips, minute twitches of the muscle the only movement, and Tony can’t resist parting his lips, slipping his tongue out to taste.  The skin of the tentacle tastes as good as the mucus had, the flavor clean and subtle, the musk substantially less than expected—a consequence, Tony supposed, of Bucky being underwater all the time.  Tony hums in interest and flicks his eyes up to check Bucky’s face.

Bucky is staring at him, eyes wide and fixed on him, intrigued and needy, aroused far beyond what he would be if Tony were doing this to his fingers.  It’s... suggestive, but honestly nothing Tony hasn’t already guessed.  Tony circles his forefinger and thumb around the tentacle, stroking up until it widens too far to continue, and the moving his hand back towards the tip.  Bucky gasps and starts babbling, pleading with Tony to  _ not stop, don’t stop, Tony—! _

Tony laughs, breathless and delighted.  “You thought... what?” he asks.  “That I’d be put off?  Wouldn’t want you with this?”  

Bucky moans and closes his eyes, swallowing hard.  “Shoulda known,” he gasps.  “You—!  You’re fuckin’  _ amazing,  _ Tony, Christ, how  _ could  _ you—but of  _ course  _ you do, and I—please, oh, God,  _ please  _ Tony—”

Tony laughs again.  It feels like triumph, feels like flying.  Like the moment when the sails fill and the boat surges forward against the waves.  “Yeah,” he says, “Okay.  I’ve got you, Bucky.”

Bucky curls the tip of the tentacle up, and together they guide it into Tony’s mouth.

 

* * *

 

Later, they find Steve standing at the helm, both hands resting on the rail as Clint mans the great wheel.  It takes a lot of muscle to steer the ship, and Tony’s constantly surprised that Clint has enough to do it; most helmsmen are larger than Clint’s slight build.  From the look on Bucky’s face as they approach, Bucky’s thinking the same thing, but neither man voices the opinion.  

Steve doesn’t initially see them when they come up alongside him, flanking him at the rail, pinning him between them.  He’s lost in thought, his face twisted, and Tony’s stomach plummets to see it.  Steve doesn’t look happy; he doesn’t even have the sort of sideways satisfaction he typically gets when they’re about to head into battle.  Instead, he looks lonely, staring out across the sea with a gaze locked on nothing, mouth turned down, brows drawn in.  

Tony’s heart clenches, and the guilt rises up inside him like a wave.  Bucky was Steve’s friend first; Steve’s lover first, too, although that was years ago and over long before Tony met either of them.  The two men had been inseparable when they were children, running around barefoot in red dirt of Georgia.  When Steve’s ma died he had moved in with Bucky, whose parents were merchants out of Savannah; when Bucky’s parents had found out the two were fooling around, they had kicked Steve out again, and Steve had gone into the Navy.  Bucky had followed in his father’s footsteps, instead, but on his third voyage had been captured by pirates.

Those pirates were long since dead; Pierce’s  _ Hydra’s Head  _ had captured them, conscripting everyone they didn’t kill.  Bucky had done well and more than well aboard the  _ Hydra’s Head,  _ and soon commanded his own ship, the  _ Hydra’s Fist.   _ He made a hell of a name for himself there; the  _ Fist  _ quickly became one of the most notorious ships in the Hydra armada, and even landlubbers who only ever sailed from their armchairs after a long and port-filled dinner knew that you didn’t want to come across the  _ Fist  _ without backup.  Or even  _ with  _ backup.  

Naturally, there was only one captain crazy enough to try it:  Steve Rogers, a legend and the darling of the American navy, sailing his famous, nigh-impregnable white oak masterpiece, the  _ Shield of America.   _

When Tony first heard this story, he had rolled his eyes, because Rogers already had a reputation and based on that,  _ of course _ he would have gone after the  _ Hydra’s Fist.   _ Now, knowing both men personally and not just by reputation, he’s pretty sure Rogers actually just stumbled across the  _ Fist  _ and then decided to go for it.

The battle is said to have been epic.  The two ships damn near sank each other; the  _ Fist did  _ go down, slowly over a period of two days, and it was only the grapples and a timely surrender that allowed her crew to cross to the  _ Shield  _ and survive.  The  _ Shield’s _ masts were both destroyed, too, and her sails were so holed there was no salvaging them.  The two ships sat there for two days after the battle, dead in the water and clinging together in death, and Steve and Bucky—once they stopped trying to kill each other—sat down together and talked for the first time in over ten years.  

They didn’t get back together, but they did restore their friendship.  From what Bucky has said, and from what he knows of Steve, Tony is pretty sure that took all of about thirty seconds from the time Steve realized who he was fighting.  The two men sat in the captain’s cabin of the  _ Shield  _ with the door open where everyone could see them.  Tony has no idea what Steve said; to this day, neither man will talk about it.  But he knows how the conversation ended:  apparently, Bucky stood up from his chair, whirled towards the door, bolted to the rail, and vomited.

After that, two men put their heads together and came up with a plan.  Bucky’s men, the ones still alive after the battle, were already on the  _ Shield,  _ locked in the brig; Bucky convinced Steve to release them and then promptly conscript them, preventing them from being hung as pirates.  It wasn’t an unheard-of move, but in peacetime it was unusual enough to raise eyebrows.  The two captains had sent divers into the sea, rescuing the masts from the  _ Fist  _ and using them to fix the  _ Shield,  _ although the ship would still need massive repairs once it made dock.  They left it that way, as damaged as possible; Bucky had a goodly store of gold, plundered over the years, and Steve had a hell of a reputation.  They used both, along with the limping condition of the ship, to persuade the Navy to sell her off to them, renamed her the  _ Soldier’s Howl,  _ fixed her up, and began a new passion of hunting pirates—starting with the semi-legal, rapacious bastards Bucky had once served.

Rumor has it they dueled for the honor of being captain of the  _ Howl.   _ Tony, having met both of them, is now pretty sure  _ that  _ rumor is correct.  

But all of that is to say, Tony’s not the only one who has been missing Bucky, but as soon as Bucky set foot on the ship, Tony whisked him away.  They could have at least shared a meal with Steve before Tony stuck Bucky in his cabin and fell upon him like a centaur at a wedding.

But no, Bucky was dripping wet when he boarded the  _ Vengeance  _ earlier; at the very least, he would have needed to change into the dry clothes he now wore.  And there had been no telling how long they would need to continue on their current heading; Tony is a little surprised they haven’t already hit their target yet.  So he couldn’t have known they would have had time for all that later.  

Tony touches his neck discreetly with a small, delicious smile.  It’s still sore and aching inside, from earlier; the tiny ridges on the bottom of Bucky’s tentacle may help him in gripping, but they were hell on Tony’s throat. On the other hand, the sensation of it, the possessiveness and heady fragility of having Bucky’s appendage filling his throat,  _ that  _ had been  _ worth it.   _ Tony shivers now, remembering it, remembering the glazed, overwhelmed look on Bucky’s face when Tony had taken the tentacle inside of himself.  

Tony can hold his breath longer than most; today he was well and truly thankful for that fact.

Anyway.  Steve is sad, and lonely, and Tony actually knew that before now, too, but Bucky’s return highlights it in a way Tony has difficulty putting aside.  He resolves to do something about that, just as soon as he has Bucky back from his devil’s bargain...

“We on course?” Bucky asks.  He bumps Steve with his shoulder as he speaks, and Tony smiles to himself when he sees it.

“Of course.” Steve gives a sharp little grin for the ancient joke.

Bucky leans around Steve to roll his eyes at Tony.  Tony smirks back at him and climbs lightly up the rail, turning to sit with his back to their course, facing both men.  “So,” he says to Steve, “did Bucky show you his shiny new arm yet?”

Steve raises his eyebrows and leans back from the rail, taking half a step to arrange them in a triangle instead of a line.  Bucky obligingly moves in, closing the gap.  “You know he didn’t.  Buck?”

Bucky flushes.  “‘Snot an arm,” he mutters.  “And it ain’t shiny.”

But he unfurls the tentacle anyway, letting it drop down out of its comfortable “resting position” in his sleeve, the folds of it pouring out of the end of the jacket like a snake.  Tony watches in his peripheral vision, because there’s no way in hell he’s looking away from Steve’s face during this, and it’s worth it:  Steve’s eyes go wide, his jaw dropping open as he sees the glistening periwinkle tentacle emerge and then emerge some more, its length only becoming apparent with it got all the way to the end, its tip hovering around Bucky’s knee.  

Bucky brings the end of it up again in a curve, moving sinuously in front of Steve’s chest.  Tony bursts out laughing, cackling until he hiccoughs, because Steve jumps back about two feet when he sees the arm move  _ up.   _ Apparently he had thought it would just hang limply, like a rope?

The tentacle moves fast—Tony learned that earlier this afternoon—but Bucky himself moves faster, cuffing Steve in the back of the head with his normal hand.  “Not scared of my little old arm there, are you, buddy?”

“Shut up,” Steve says crankily, and Tony almost falls off the rail laughing at him.  “I didn’t know it could  _ move,” _ Steve insists.  “I didn’t know  _ what  _ it was, I thought—”  

He stops, eyes narrowing as he studies the tentacle wiggling back and forth in front of him, doing a little dance.  He looks at the tip, and then down its length, and then back at the tip again.    He sighs, looking resigned, before turning to Tony.  “You put it in your ass, didn’t you?”

Tony and Bucky both laugh again in what is probably an ominous unison, and Steve reaches out to hold Tony by the front of his shirt because he’s rocking back on the rail far enough to make Steve nervous.  

“At least tell me you’ve  _ washed  _ it, since.”

“We didn’t, though!” Tony protests, full of faux innocence that’s not going to fool anyone.  “Do that, I mean.”

Steve looks  _ completely  _ unconvinced.

“Yet,” Bucky adds with a grin, and okay,  _ now  _ Steve believes them.  He rolls his eyes.

“What, were you  _ saving it?”   _

They eventually settle down, the laughter fading away into a companionable silence.  They’re waiting; waiting to see if their heading takes them true, waiting to see if they have been betrayed...  A full year between then and now, their plan may not work out, after all...

“Who’s in the lookout nest, anyway?” Tony asks after the silence went from comfortable, to anxious, to strained.

“New kid,” Steve answers.  “The stowaway?”

“Who, Parker?  Skinny, brown hair, mooning after Jones?”

“Everyone moons after Jones.”

“That’s because she’s  _ Jones,”   _ Bucky puts in.  “Good taste, though.  Bit young, though older than she looks.  You seriously let yourself pick up a stowaway?”  He’s wrapped the tentacle around Tony’s leg, and the rail, seemingly without noticing; Tony is now firmly pinned.  He pretends not to notice, but the smile keeps working it’s way into the corners of his eyes, and he’s pretty sure that’s why Bucky looks so smug.

“As stowaways go, he’s useful,” Tony shrugs.  “He’s been boosting me during storms.” It’s true:  he’s not sure how Parker knows to do it—he’s not even sure Parker knows he  _ is  _ doing it—but the magics he’s been working to keep the winds in the  _ Vengeance’s  _ sails—and out of anyone else’s—have all been much easier with Parker’s magic reinforcing his. 

“I didn’t know that,” Steve says.  He’s frowning.  “The kid’s an enchanter?”

“Nooo...”  Tony taps his fingers on the rail.  “Not yet.  He’s got heart, though—and some brains, too.”

“Huh.  Maybe something to keep an eye on.  Don’t you people usually take apprentices at some point?”

Tony groans dramatically to cover the irrational flash of fear which arcs through him.  His  _ father  _ took apprentices;  _ Tony  _ can’t do that, can’t be like—

Tony is facing aft, so of the three of them he’s the only one in a position to see Parker slip out of the crow’s nest.  Parker slings his vest around a nearby rope, holding both ends of the garment crossed over itself, and swings down all the way to the deck in about three seconds before somersaulting off the rope and sprinting towards them.  

Tony kicks Steve in the thigh, nodding behind him towards the boy.  “Incoming,” he murmurs.

Steve turns, sees Parker, and lights up.  “Sail?” 

“Sail,” Parker says, nodding and gasping for breath.  “Sorry, sir.  Figured I could run it just about as fast, and that way they wouldn’t hear me.”

“Good thinking.”  Steve clasps his hand on Parker’s shoulder approvingly, and Parker looks dazed with the warmth of it.  (Bucky makes soft, fake gagging noises behind Steve’s back.)  “Did you see her colors?”  

Parker nods.  “Union Jack,” he answers.  “And under that another flag, black with red design?  Couldn’t see much more—”

But he doesn’t  _ need  _ to have seen more; all three of them know that’s the flag of Hydra.

They’ve found Pierce.  

Bucky’s smiling, vicious and hard; Steve is grimly triumphant.

“What’s her heading?” Tony asks, and Parker startles as if only just now realizing Tony was there.  

“Sir!  Sorry, s-sir, I mean, she, uh...  She’s at—”  

He casts his eye over the bow, clearly estimating.  

“—at about twenty degrees off of our current course, and she’s heading for... A hundred thirty?  A hundred twenty?  Right around there.”  He points, then visibly realizes he’s pointing and flushes, dropping his arm.  “So, nearly parallel to us, sir.”  

“And in the opposite direction.”  Tony raises his eyebrows at Steve.  

Steve thinks it over for a second, then nods.  “CLINT!  Change course, ninety degrees starboard.”  He moves away from them, shouting at the men in the lines.  

Tony looks at Bucky, grinning.  “Still think it’s not gonna work?”

Bucky shakes his head and hands over the coin they had wagered on this.  “Still  _ certain  _ it’s not gonna work, darlin’.  But, hell, Pierce is a nasty piece of work; worst that happens is we kill him, right?”

“Fair enough.”  Tony feels his smile turn dark and grim.

Bucky looks over at Parker, grey eyes cool as he studies the young man.  Whatever he’s thinking, though, he doesn’t say it.  Instead he just asks, “Don’t you have something you should be doing?”

Parker jumps like a startled cat, then throws an exceptionally sloppy salute and scuttles towards the lines.  Tony shakes his head at Bucky in mock-disappointment.  “Mean.”

Bucky snorts.  “Too bad,” he says.  “C’mon—I think Steve is about to make a speech.”  He holds out his hand with his normal gentlemanly courtesy to help Tony down off the rail.

 

* * *

 

 

BUCKY

 

The  _ Hydra’s Head  _ is a fully-armed man-o’-war, terrifyingly well-armed and faster than she has any right to be—as Bucky can remember first-hand.  The  _ Head,  _ alone now among the armada of Hydra ships, never carries cargo; she’s an escort ship, running alongside the more lucrative vessels precisely because people like Tony, Bucky and Steve tend to attack them.  Typically, she’ll escort a ship coming from Africa to the point of sale, usually rendezvousing at a small island port to the south-east of the Caribbean so that she can play escort through the most dangerous territory.  While the slaver sells her cargo, the  _ Hydra’s Head  _ will pick up a small load of cotton, food, ammunition, and specialty goods—just enough to claim plausible deniability should anyone accuse her of being exactly what she actually is, which is to say halfway between a guard and a pirate—sail back down to the islands, sell her load, and swing out to pick up another ship.  

They’ve timed it so that the  _ Head— _ and the jokes about the name come far too easily; someone in Hydra’s chain of command really,  _ really  _ didn’t think that one through—is on the backswing of her voyage.  They didn’t really have a choice about that timing; Bucky only gets one day on the surface per year, and this is it.  But it works out to their advantage, because while the  _ Head  _ will be feeling her oats, fully stocked and well-rested, she’ll also be alone, with no other ship to protect.  Hydra’s cargo vessels are hardly easy targets; the  _ Vengeance  _ is better off, by far, catching the  _ Head  _ alone.

Or, as they all slipped up and called it while planning this,  _ hitting  _ the  _ Head  _ alone.  The jokes really  _ do  _ write themselves...

They’ve come at her from off her starboard bow, and have changed course to charge her; Pierce, who once owned Bucky’s soul and who personally commands both the Hydra armada and the  _ Hydra’s Head,  _ isn’t stupid.  He will have recognized that maneuver as the start of an attack.  

“There are two possibilities,” Steve says, his voice carrying clear as a brass bell to all of the men, but not loud enough for the men aboard the other ship to hear it.  “Either Pierce will flee... or he will fight.  If he flees, then given our positions he must flee towards the Macuphin Keys, where the water is too shallow for him to easily maneuver, and we will have the advantage of our lighter draft.”  He pauses, his eyes scanning the assembled crew, and quirks a smug brow.  “Some of you who have been with me for years have used this technique before.”

Bucky chuckles along with the old-timers, Gabe and Jacques and the rest, because that is, of course, how Steve, sailing the  _ Shield of America,  _ had bested  _ Bucky,  _ sailing the  _ Hydra’s Fist,  _ all those years ago.  The Macuphin Keys are nothing islands, mere spits of sand and sometimes grass, with vast reefs beneath them.  They’re low-profile, but spread surprisingly far, making them a difficult-to-foresee obstacle, and because there’s nothing on the damn keys, they don’t show up on any maps.

“If Pierce flees to the islands, we will have him!  But if he does, it will be a long, hard battle; eat and drink well during the chase, if there is one, because you’re going to need that energy.  Clean your weapons, load your guns, double knot your laces, and say any prayers that need saying.

“Do it all  _ now!   _ Because if the  _ Hydra’s Head doesn’t  _ turn, the battle will be close and fast.  We will destroy them!  But we cannot afford to get sloppy.  We practice—”

Steve pauses for a self-mocking grin, and the crew takes the cue, hooting and jeering good-naturedly.  Steve’s military background has left him mad for drills, and he regularly holds contests with the men to practice their precision and speed.  It has made the  _ Vengeance,  _ already a hell of ship, into one of the deadliest pirate vessels on the water... but it  _ does  _ get Steve some eye-rolling and ribbing from the men.

“Yeah, alright, we practice a lot!  But it has made us deadly, and we will prove that today.  The  _ Hydra’s Head  _ has more guns than almost any other ship we have taken, so the faster we breach her, the fewer lives we lose.  Do not let each other down.”

He looks up at the crow’s nest, where Parker is hanging almost all the way out, holding onto the rail by his feet, and watching to see what course the  _ Hydra’s Head  _ sets.  Steve takes a deep breath and bellows:  _ “Turn or charge, Parker?!” _

The ship is silent for one breath, two, while Parker studies the ship that can only barely be seen on the horizon.  And then—

“TURN, SIR!”  Parker’s voice comes back, cracking but not uncertain, and the whole ship sets up a war cry, hollering and whooping like banshees.  Steve has to shout good and loud to make himself heard over them, bellowing orders to fill the sails and ready the guns.  He eyes Tony and Bucky when he’s finished.  

“Get some rest,” he says.  His voice is faintly hoarse, either from shouting or strong emotion.  “You have a good couple of hours, now; take them.”

Tony tugs at Bucky’s arm, and Bucky nods at Steve before following his husband back to their cabin.

 

* * *

 

“It’s a good plan,” Tony says.  He sounds like he’s trying to be comforting, but he’s not succeeding, because Bucky’s not stupid, and he knows that this is a  _ terrible plan.   _

They’re back on the bed, bodies pressed together all down their lengths, legs intertwined.  Tony’s left arm is under Bucky’s neck; Bucky’s tentacle is squiggling down Tony’s back, massaging slowly.  They’re tasting each other’s breaths, and it’s still not enough, but it’s all they’re going to get until after the battle.

Tony’s eyes are open, peacefully blinking across into Bucky’s; they’re also a little uneven, Bucky thinks, not for the first time.  One eye is just a little bit further from the tip of the nose than the other.  Bucky’s always liked that about Tony; it’s too minor a feature to detract from his handsomeness at all, too subtle for anyone else to notice if they weren’t studying Tony’s face the way Bucky has.  The difference is less than the width of Bucky’s smallest fingernail, but he can always find it in Tony’s face, reassuringly imperfect, familiar and dear.  

“It’s a terrible fucking plan,” Bucky contradicts, tired and by rote.  Then he sighs, winding his hand into Tony’s hair and brushing it back from his face.  It’s an old habit, one they had done often before all the... well,  _ before... _ calming and soothing for them both.  “But we don’t have a better one,” he continues, scratching lightly at Tony’s scalp before carding through his hair again.

Tony shifts closer, pressing light, lingering kisses across the stretch of Bucky’s cheekbone.  ”I can’t help but feel like we’ve been in this situation before,” he murmurs.  Kiss.  Kiss.  Lips trailing, ghost-soft, over the tender skin on the outside of Bucky’s eyes.  “Isn’t that how we got here?”  A casual swirl of his finger upright in the air indicates what he means.  

Bucky closes his eyes and leans into Tony’s kisses.  “Yeah.”  His voice cracks halfway through the syllable, and he presses even harder with the tentacle, trying to feel as much of Tony’s warmth against himself as possible.  “We’re still here, though; I mean, we ain’t dead.  That has to count for somethin’.”

Tony just brushes more kisses over his cheeks, saying nothing, as they wait for the call.

 

* * *

 

Steve was right about the battle:  it’s a long one, and hard, and Bucky can’t help but wonder if he’s really worth all the blood that gets spilled that day.  

But, no, there’s no point in thinking like that; the truth is, they would’ve gone after the  _ Head  _ anyway, sooner or later:  she’s a toxic ship, an infection in their waters, and they need to clean her out.  No question about that.

So it’s not really reasonable for Bucky to take all the blame on himself, but it still  _ feels  _ like he should.  After all, if they hadn’t had Bucky to consider, maybe they could’ve worn Pierce down before going after him...

But it’s too late now, either way, so instead he just throws himself into the battle, sword swinging (not even Bucky can load a gun with a tentacle). 

They have the wind on their side; Pierce has some fearsome weatherwitches in his employ, but they have the  _ Flying Dutchman,  _ and her helmsman steers the clouds, too.  And since they  _ do  _ have the  _ Flying Dutchman,  _ they also have the element of surprise.

The  _ Dutchman  _ has been trailing the  _ Vengeance  _ the whole time Bucky has been aboard her, far enough aft that the  _ Head  _ can’t possibly have seen her; it was what Bucky had ordered the  _ Dutchman’s  _ mate, an ancient creature with a face, body, and mind all startlingly similar to those of a jellyfish, to do.  The  _ Hydra’s Head  _ had ventured off her regular course because they were herding her, and as a result she had sailed straight into the Macuphin Keys, just as Steve had predicted; two hours before they reached the Keys, Bucky had slipped off of the  _ Vengeance  _ in a dinghy and started rowing for the  _ Dutchman.   _

Once they reached the Keys, the  _ Vengeance’s  _ lighter draft gives her an advantage over the heavily armed  _ Head,  _ because the sailable channels are suddenly narrower, and more attention must be paid to navigating safely.  The more manpower focused on sailing, the less there is available to fight pirates with.  And if the  _ Head’s  _ weatherwitches lose control over the storms, that only gets worse—so of course, once Bucky knows that the  _ Head  _ has come to bear, he surfaces the  _ Dutchman  _ from her depths, allowing the power of the ship to wipe out the  _ Head’s  _ enchanters. 

They surface astern of the _Head,_ and it’s the beginning of the end: the _Head_ has been firing on the _Vengeance_ adequately enough, but her crew can’t man the bow _and_ the stern guns _and_ navigate in these shallows.  Besides which, Bucky _still_ has the skies, switching the air currents back and forth so quickly that all the _Head_ can do is try to hang on and brazen it out.  Bucky also has a narrower draft in the _Dutchman—_ the ship could probably float three feet in the air if he _really_ focused, but even without manipulating it she’s still lighter in the water than the gargantuan _Head._

The upshot of all of this is that Bucky can move far more nimbly than any other player on sea, bringing the  _ Dutchman  _ alongside the  _ Head,  _ pivoting her neatly, and ramming her right into the larger craft.

So that’s exactly what he does.  They hole the  _ Hydra’s Head  _ some twenty yards back from her bow, and the  _ Dutchman’s  _ sailors set to work as the waters leak in.  

It’s a dirty fight, the two crews mixing all over the decks of both ships.  Someone—Bucky doesn’t see who—lights a fire, panicking almost everybody; there’s no greater enemy on the surface of a ship than a fire.  Two powder stashes for the  _ Head’s  _ starboard guns catch fire and explode.

Quite a few of the  _ Dutchman’s  _ crew die because they were too busy trying to disengage the  _ Dutchman  _ from the  _ Head  _ before the fire could cross ships to cover their  _ damned asses.   _ Bucky can’t help thinking with a sense of grim fatality, though, that by the end of the day, there will be more men from the  _ Head  _ to replace them. 

But the  _ Hydra’s Head  _ with their firebrand tactics aren’t the only ones who can wield visceral horror as a weapon, and the waterlogged forms of Bucky’s crew are obviously terrifying to the sailors of the  _ Head.   _ Before long, the  _ Vengeance  _ manages to ghost past on the starboard side and blast the  _ Head’s  _ ribs into smithereens, and it doesn’t take much longer after that.  The deathblow comes when someone—and Bucky has a pretty good idea of who—lights the  _ Head’s  _ powder stores, and the entire back half of the ship breaks off.  

Bucky calls his men back to the _Dutchman_ in a scream.  The front half of the _Head_ is slowly drifting away from the _Dutchman—_ not quickly enough; the fire on her is making all of their bowels watery.  The crew of the _Head_ are mostly jumping into the waves, apparently deciding they’ll have better luck on the godforsaken Macuphin Keys than on the _Dutchman—_ and they’re probably right.  But the last two figures over the gap, before the wreckage of the once-grand ship drifts away, are both human.

Alexander Pierce, the man who once ruled Bucky’s life with lies and manipulations.

And Natasha, known as the Black Widow, with her razor-sharp boot knife pricking Pierce’s throat.

“Hello, Natasha,” Bucky says.  A vicious smile is curling over his lips.  “You look good.”

“Barnes,” she says in return.  Her gaze passes over his tentacle, his torn coat, his limp, too-long hair and his blue-tinted skin, and the whole of him splatter with gore.  “You look... wet.”

He thinks about it, then shrugs.  “He still armed?” he asks, nodding at Pierce.  Pierce is purpling from being ignored, and Bucky is petty enough to find it  _ delicious.   _

“Who do you think I am?” Natasha asks.  “I spent a year pretending to be a member of his crew in order to spy on him and betray him to his doom, so if he breaks free, I’m the first person he’s going kill.  Yes, he is  _ thoroughly  _ disarmed.”

“Not as disarmed as he left me,” Bucky says with faux cheerfulness.  He waves his tentacle to demonstrate. 

Pierce’s purple blanches to white with impressive speed.

 

* * *

 

The head of the  _ Head  _ takes some time to drift away, and by the time Tony is able to cross over from the  _ Vengeance— _ Steve staying behind in command and to monitor cleanup—Pierce has been tied up on the  _ Dutchman,  _ gagged, and furious.  His eyes are snapping, and he’s struggling against his bonds.  

Bucky and Nat are watching him while playing cribbage.

Tony hops down off the rail just as Nat pegs her last point into the win.  “Really?” Tony says.  He sounds unimpressed.  “You couldn’t find anything better to do?”

“I left my knitting in your cabin,” Natasha says, deadpan.  She adds in a threatening tone, “It had  _ better  _ still be there.”

(It is; Bucky saw it earlier.)

“Probably,” Tony shrugs with a careless grin.  “We doing this?”

Bucky gestures for Tony to take the lead.  

They circle Pierce like jackals where he’s tied to the main mast, his eyes spitting hate.  Bucky smiles, not very nicely, and lets Tony and Natasha do the talking.  

He  _ has  _ to let them do the talking, or this isn’t going to work.  There are  _ rules.   _

“So, here’s the deal,” Tony starts.  “I’m Tony—you’ve heard of me—and this is Natasha—you’ve known her for a while, now.”

Pierce visibly tries to light them all on fire with his mind, his teeth chewing at the gag.

“We both want you dead,” Tony says.  “Just... so dead.  The deadest.”

“Mmm,” Natasha agrees.  She draws a knife and slowly, noisily, starts to sharpen it.

“But we have a problem.  We need someone to take this ship.  And you’re the handiest guy we’ve got!  Would  _ you  _ be available?”

“I think he would be,” says Natasha, her voice full of terrifyingly fake innocence.  “Hey, Pierce; didn’t you just messily  _ lose  _ a ship?  You’d be able to take a new one, right?”

“He definitely lost it,” Tony confirms.  “It is...”  

All three of them turn to look out at the ocean, where the burning wreckage of the smallest piece of the most terrifying ship in Pierce’s armada can still be see, gently drifting away.  

“...yeeeeeah.  It’s  _ very  _ lost.”

Pierce shouts into the gag and struggles furiously against his bonds, then goes abruptly still, horror-struck.

Natasha’s knife has drifted towards him, and is, oh-so-gently, lifting his balls.  

Natasha smiles.  

Tony leans in.

“Ask Bucky to let you take the  _ Dutchman  _ from him,” Tony instructs.  His voice is low, and vicious, and satisfied.  “Ask him nicely, and ask him fast.”  

Pierce bluffs for one more moment, glaring at Tony and then Bucky equally before turning his gaze to Natasha and hesitating. 

The noise of a gun cocking is very loud on the otherwise-still deck of the ship.  Pierce turns his gaze back to where Tony has drawn a pistol, and hesitates again.

“If you hurry,” Natasha says evenly, “you might be able to salvage some of the drowning crew of the  _ Head  _ to help you man her.  I know the  _ Dutchman  _ lost an awful lot of sailors in that battle...”

_ “And  _ I won’t blow your head off,” Tony offers with false earnestness.

_ “And  _ Tony won’t blow your head off,” Natasha adds indulgently.  

Pierce still looks like he hates them, but nods, reluctance in every line.  Natasha pulls her knife away from his little treasure and raises it to his face, slicing away the gag, and then they pull aside to let Pierce look at Bucky.

Once upon a time, Bucky had looked up to Pierce.  He had served him loyally and ardently, and in return had gotten nothing but lies and cold gold.  He had thought he was protecting peaceful merchants, but that had been nothing but lies.  

Pierce is a slaver, a trader in flesh, and no more peaceful than he is a merchant. 

Once, Bucky had looked to Pierce almost like a father, but now he knows the truth: there is no better candidate for imprisonment in the role of Davy Jones.

The deal isn’t good until Pierce offers it himself, and they all wait with bated breath to see if he’ll do it.  Pierce has to know it’s going to be almost impossible to rule the angry men of the  _ Dutchman _ for some time after he putatively takes command; has to know, too, that if he becomes the new Davy Jones, his Hydra shipping empire is going to crumble into dust.  Even if he manages to pass the mantle on as soon as the next year, that time will have been enough for Pierce to lose everything he has worked for.

So Bucky honestly doesn’t know if Pierce is going to take their “offer” or not.  He might prefer death.

But Steve thinks the man is a big enough coward that he’ll go for it, and Tony and Natasha had both agreed.  So maybe...

Bucky lets himself hope.

_ Maybe... _

And then Pierce opens his mouth, and begs, and suddenly it’s all over, just like that.

 

* * *

 

“You know that as soon as he gets his feet under him, Pierce is going to try to renege on that deal.  He only took it in the first place because we forced him to.”  Tony gives Bucky’s old lead prosthetic one last buff with the polishing cloth before reaching down to help him into it.

“That’s the thing about magic, though,” Bucky says.  He looks up at his husband with a smug little smirk as the prosthetic clicks into place.  “Magic doesn’t care whether you were coerced or not.”

Tony’s eyebrows shoot up.  “True,” he allows, “But how did you know it?”

Bucky smirks and drags Tony down into kissing range.  

“Pillow talk.”

 

* * *

 

The powers of Davy Jones take a while to transition over, so they have enough time to make their escape.  They knock Pierce out and leave him tied him to the  _ Dutchman’s  _ mast.  Bucky assures the crew of the  _ Dutchman  _ that, while he doesn’t care for Pierce’s morals, he is a competent and even frightening commander who will serve them well.  It’s a little too true, and Bucky grits his teeth as he says it: if Steve hadn’t come for Bucky, Bucky himself might still be loyally doing Pierce’s bidding.

They board the  _ Vengeance— _ the  _ Vengeance  _ is astonishingly unscathed by her battle with the  _ Hydra’s Head,  _ but then, Steve is an extraordinarily gifted naval commander—and sail straight for Kingston, putting in next to the  _ Falcon’s Flight  _ and the  _ Director’s Fury.   _ They order the whole crew off the boat, leaving only a skeleton force to guard the ship.  They even take down the sails once they make port and take them with them as they—Steve, Natasha, Bucky and Tony—all head out to Tony’s estate some twenty miles outside of the city.

Three miles out, though, there comes a loud thump and a stream of breathless profanity which gets rapidly more quiet.  They exchange glances for a second before Happy, outside on the coachman’s box, slows the carriage rather more suddenly than he probably should.  

The sudden loss of forward motion throws them all into each other, and they end up sprawled in a pile on the floor of the carriage, groaning.  “Thanks,” Tony says sarcastically.  

He does it quietly enough that Happy can’t hear him, though.

“What is it, Happy?” Natasha calls sharply.  

Happy doesn’t answer, and in a second they all produce weapons. 

Steve is the first one out the door, and Bucky watches as Steve’s posture goes from huddled defensively, to huddled but surprised, to upright and with his hands on his hips in disapproval.  At that point, Bucky uncocks his pistol and lets the lead-covered stump of his left arm sag out of its defensive position.  “No threat,” he says, sounding about as exasperated as he actually is.

They pile out of the carriage to see what’s toward.

“You have  _ got  _ to be kidding me.”  

 

* * *

 

TONY

 

Tony runs his hand through his hair at the sight in front of them.  “Kid, you have  _ got  _ to stop stowing away.”

Parker is sprawled in the dirt some fifteen yards behind their carriage, looking unhurt, but both dusty from the road and embarrassed.  He stands, brushing himself off.  (Futilely; he’s going to stink until he manages to get a bath.)  “In my defence,” he calls, “it is a lot easier to stow away on a ship than it is on a carriage.”

Behind Tony, Bucky gives a low snort.  “What’d you do,” he asks, “try to just hold on to the back and lose your grip?”

The glare and the flush put together make it clear that’s pretty much  _ exactly  _ what Parker did.

Tony sighs.  He wants to ask Parker why he—she?  Sailors all wear the same things because there’s no time for skirts on a ship, so it’s kind of hard to tell sometimes, but Tony’s pretty sure he’s heard Steve say “he”—is stalking him.  But the truth is, Tony already knows, and he’s been avoiding the whole mess as long as he possibly could.  

There are different ways to be an enchanter.  There are the weatherwitches, the sailing enchanters who mostly call winds and calm storms.  There are the traveller witches, the kind of enchanters who travel with carnivals, using cards and tea leaves and the like to see the future—or other, darker tricks—although mostly, they don’t use anything: a lot of Traveller witches get by on personality and flare.  

And then there are the Arcanists, people like Tony’s father, enchanters who craft weapons and other, more abstruse enchantments.  Those are the ones who put on airs.  PIles of dusty books?  Arcanist.  Spire-filled castle—or extensive estate on a tropical island, as the case may be?  Arcanist.  Robes and a pointy hat?   _ Definitely  _ an Arcanist.

Tony... isn’t that.  Or, rather, he  _ is,  _ but... not in that way.  

Bucky asked Tony, once, which kind of enchanter Tony was, and Tony answered him, “Yes,” because he really does do it all.  Weather, divination, artifacts...  Hell, Tony even does his own share of prestidigitation and showmanship!  

But mostly, in his heart, Tony is an Arcanist.  He just never wants to admit it.

Because that’s what his  _ father  _ had been.

And part of being an Arcanist—or any kind of enchanter, but overwhelmingly it’s most common in the Arcanists—is taking an apprentice, something Tony has shied away from for  _ years.   _ It’s not that he doesn’t like young people; it’s that he  _ does  _ like young people, and they deserve a lot better than him!

Looks like the time has come, though.  Even Tony can admit it when his doom comes down on him like a load of rocks.  Or, in this case, like a young... person... who tends to take the fastest,  _ most direct  _ route from the crow’s nest to the deck.

Tony sighs.  “Get in the coach,” he says tiredly.  “Wait—no.  Get on the bench with Happy, instead.  Coach is crowded.”  Plus, Parker now smells like the road, but Tony’s not going to mention that.

He’s not ready for an apprentice, not sure he’ll ever  _ be  _ ready for an apprentice; certainly his own father had been a shit teacher, and Tony doesn’t really have a frame of reference for how to do any better than that.  But Parker has too much raw power—obvious even to someone trying their damnedest to ignore the kid—to leave him alone, unsupervised, to run his own experiments.  

No, Tony’s going to have to take the kid under his wing, damn it.

“Oh, wow, look at this!  Pleasure to meet you, ma’am, I’m Parker, I’ve been on the  _ Vengeance—” _

“Don’t talk, Parker.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The Lonely Island song, "I'm On A Boat." Alternate title would have been: Never Shall We Die (well, hardly ever). 
> 
> ...at least I amuse myself. :P


End file.
